Day 1 in Bonaire - Diver's Paradise

I absolutely love this place. After the amazing apartment at Den Lamen last year, I had to come back. This year, I have an even better apartment - ocean front with a wrap around balcony that fits a full dining table and 2 lounge chairs with room to spare. It's really luxurious.  

Today was our first day of diving and it was by far the most amazing first day every.  On our first dive, we saw 2 octopuses, one of them just out in open. I've never seen such a thing. There were so many groups of fish and pairs of fish. Really beautiful.

Our second dive was at Something Special which is always a favorite. Beautiful plentiful fish as always.  We must have seen 5+ eels, 3 spotted sea snakes, a lobster, and 5+ porcupinefish which I totally love.

Banded Coral Shrimp

Mr. Octopus 

And his lady friend

Sea Anemone

Spotted Moray Eel

Burrfish

Queen Anglefish

French Angelfish in transition

Sea anemone

Our last day

The storm stayed away for our last day of diving but was in full force when we woke up on our last day. It was so windy on the water that there was no one allowed on the beach or in the water.  We're lucky our last day of diving didn't get cancelled because there's definitely no diving today.  They didn't even have breakfast on the beach dining area.  Everything was in the building instead. 

We had a lovely morning taking it easy. Even with the wind, the view from our room was still gorgeous as the colors were still beautiful. Here are some pictures from the hotel, more to come...

Wonderful trampolines suspended over the water so you can lie out in the sun/under the umbrella and listen to the crashing ocean waves or take a dip in the ocean from the conveniently adjacent stairway down to the water below.

Sunset views from our room

Windy morning

Dive day 5

We were lucky to have a full last day of diving despite forecasts of thunderstorms.  We went to Palancar Gardens and Paso del Cedral again.  There wasn't as much large creatures though we did see an eagle ray from far away. However, the last dive was super beautiful with great colors.  At the end of the dive though I saw a nurse shark swimming about and for a bit it swam towards me but then decided to turn around. 

Pregnant Crab

 Southern Stingray

 Jellyfish in the waves

 Painted Sea Slug

 Yellow Stingray Hiding

 Cozumel Splendid Toadfish

Dive day 4

What an incredible day! Though I think I stayed under too long and got a little too much nitrogen.  I've been feeling a bit discombobulated... I can't recall exactly how many turtles we saw on each dive.

Here are some pics:

Lionfish

 Baby Drumfish

 Blacktip shark from far away

 Crab over something?

 Eagle rays!

 Splendid toadfish

 Purple tipped Sea anemone

 Nurse shark sleeping

We saw 5 sharks, 4 splendid toadfish, at least 3 turtles, and 3 eagle rays!!

One of the sharks actually came below us and circled a platform on the reef offering a fantastic opportunity for a video (coming soon). I chased down the eagle rays and got some video too but the very strong current made the video very choppy.